Cuxhaven gets new flood defence barriers
The German North Sea port of Cuxhaven has completed the construction and installation of two new flood barriers which together cost €19m and are the hub of flood defences costing the city about €31m up to 2012.
The barrier locks, in the Alter Fischereihafen and the Schleusenpriel Harbour, are 14m and 19m wide respectively and stand 7m above normal zero water level. They have been built to shorten the dyke line by 1.5km and thus increase protection for the Elbe Estuary port, which is regularly threatened by flooding.
State Environment Minister Hans-Heinrich Sander said even with the new barriers now in place, ‘Cuxhaven will remain one of the biggest water construction sites in Lower Saxony over the coming three years with more than €30m being invested here.’ Berlin is paying 70% of that sum and the federal state of Lower Saxony the rest.
Up to June this year the new barriers are getting walkways, staircases and ladders as well as electrics, hydraulics, air compressors and water flow control equipment.
Work starts this month on adapting the existing dykes around the harbour basins to incorporate the two new barrier locks. All in all, 650m of flood defence walls and seven flood gates are being built up to about December 2012.
Officials said 1,400cu/m of reinforced concrete, 280 tons of reinforcing steel, 1,090 tons of piling profiles and 560 tons of steel pilings were being used. The project was, they said, ‘a real challenge for the planners’ because existing dykes had to remain intact and functional while new ones were being built.
In charge of the project is the Lower Saxony water, coastal and environment protection authority NLWKN. Construction is in the hands of a consortium grouping Ludwig Freytag GmbH & Co KG, in Oldenburg and Echterhoff Bau GmbH in Dessau.
By Tom Todd
